A section of the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, designed by muralist Judy Baca, that showcases pivotal moments in California history.
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Topline:
One of the largest murals in the world is here in Southern California, stretching for half a mile along the L.A. River in North Hollywood. It’s known as the Great Wall of L.A. and it was painted by artist Judy Baca decades ago, but work has been underway to expand it.
What’s the mural? The Great Wall of L.A. depicts scenes of California, from prehistoric times to the 1950s. The mural focuses largely on civil rights uprisings.
What’s getting added? For nine months, Baca and her team have been at LACMA painting more recent historic scenes in a live exhibit, like the East L.A. walkouts and the Watts uprising. There are more sections in the works, too, like Woodstock and a section on Jim Crow laws.
Where can I see more? Her time at LACMA has now finished, but you can read on to see what the additions look like now. Baca and her team will continue painting the expansion at the Bergamot Station Art Center in Santa Monica starting Aug. 2.
In the Resnick Pavilion, visitors could watch as painters placed thousands of acrylic brush strokes on a huge roll of unwoven fabric. Baca said the studio-style process took her out of her element.
“I must say that I was very skeptical about painting in a white box,” Baca told the crowd at a recent press event. “I don’t paint in white boxes. I paint in rivers and I paint on freeways. I paint in places where it’s dangerous.”
The entrance to the exhibit at LACMA featuring live painting of new sections to be added to the Great Wall of Los Angeles.
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Muralist Judy Baca, the visionary behind the Great Wall of Los Angeles.
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But this was a different kind of artistic danger, she said, because people could directly question the artists about the scenes being painted. The work included scenes from the Chicano movement, the Watts Renaissance and LGBTQ+ rights protests, ultimately covering 190 feet of additions.
The team’s time at LACMA ended on July 21, but the expansion is far from over. They’ll continue painting at the Bergamot Station Art Center starting Aug. 2, with a view to adding historic moments from around the 1970s, including Jimi Hendrix scenes and Woodstock.
“That will prove to be as interesting, and maybe a little even more controversial,” Baca said.
She expects to add another 200 feet of art in this phase, finishing in 2027 (in time for the Olympics). While the painting continues, here’s a look at what’s been added.
Chicano history
A section of the Great Wall of Los Angeles mural, designed by muralist Judy Baca, that shows labor leaders in front of grape fields.
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Dolores Huerta's megaphone, with "Huelga" (strike) added to it.
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The first section covers significant moments in the Chicano Movement.
It starts off with a depiction of major labor leaders in the Central Valley, including Phillip Vera Cruz, César Chávez, Dolores Huerta with her megaphone and poet-boxer Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales — influential figures in the farmworker rights movement.
Gonzales is shown penning his famous poem Yo Soy Joaquin, which speaks of the struggles Chicano people have faced with economic justice and equal rights.
“I think I was a young girl when I heard it the first time, and I went, ‘oh my god, Yo Soy Joaquin,’” Baca recalled. “Does that mean that brown is beautiful the way Black is beautiful? It changed my sense about who I was.”
Born in Watts in 1946 to Mexican American parents, Baca counts her grandmother’s Indigenous culture as a big influence on her Chicana identity.
The artists' depiction of the El Teatro Campesino performers wearing pig masks.
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The leaders loom in front of grape fields, calling back to the 1965 Delano Grape Strike, consumer boycott and union fight to secure higher wages for farmworkers. A yellow plane flies behind them to represent the dropping of the pesticides into the fields. The origins of Chicano playwright Luis Valdez’s theater company, El Teatro Campesino, is also shown as people don pig masks in preparation to perform the skits on flatbed trucks that encouraged farmworkers to join the picket line.
The colorful green hills in the background then turn brown, the backdrop for a Southern California scene.
It’s the East L.A. Walkouts of 1968, as students come out of their classrooms to protest prejudice in the education system, urging for Chicano history to be taught in schools.
Police are painted arresting people, including young girls with brown berets — a moniker of the Chicano group modeled after the Black Panthers — to reflect women’s contributions to the movement.
The segment on the East L.A. Walkouts of 1968.
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Black power
The Watts Uprising of 1965 is the next scene you’re transported to as public outcry followed the traffic stop of Marquette and Ronald Frye that turned violent. An alley is engulfed in flames as police fight with the brothers and their mother.
Baca and her team used creative freedom here because they depict the brothers’ mother, Rena Frye, as protecting her sons from inside the car. In reality, Rena was outside before punches were thrown, having come over to claim the vehicle when her son failed a sobriety test. While opinions are mixed on why that fight began, the artists’ take has resonated with people who remember how the rebellion felt.
“As you might think, you don’t push somebody's mother if you don't want a riot,” Baca said of the rebellion that followed. “People have said to us this just looks the way it was in Watts at that time.”
A scene that represents the Watts Uprising of 1965 and the traffic stop of Marquette and Ronald Frye.
Further down the painted fabric shows the art and community-led work that came out of the rubble from that time.
A young Richard Wyatt is shown painting a portrait of Cecil Ferguson, who was widely credited with fostering art communities in L.A. The inclusion of the two evokes the future, as among his artworks, Wyatt painted a mural of Ferguson on a wall at the Watts Towers Arts Center in the 80s.
Opposite of the Watts Towers, a trio of ferocious black panthers signify the community’s power during this time. Two women are painted with groceries from the Black Panther Party’s free food program, as children eat and read books about colonization.
The scene closes with an outside view of the Black Panther Party’s L.A. headquarters and the large LAPD tank that showed up during the 1969 SWAT raid on the location.
Other scenes
Muralist Judy Baca standing in front of the Mexican living room section of the Great Wall of Los Angeles.
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The TV ofrenda in the living room.
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As the expansion continues, you get placed into a Mexican living room, in a merging of politics and culture.
An old box TV is used as an ofrenda as portraits of both conventional and revolutionary political figures hang above: John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. Baca’s uncle Jesus “Chewy” Baca and his family are pictured on the ledge.
“What very often happened in people’s families living rooms were people taking photographs of people who were lost during this period of the 60s,” Baca said. “So we painted them like newspaper images.”
The artists' portrayal of the Cooper Do-nuts pushback.
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Two lesbians shown in the first L.A. Pride parade.
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The painted mural ends with a nod to LGBTQ+ rights.
“As the story was told, they started slinging donuts at the cops,” Baca said. “That really captured our imagination. We have never seen a photograph of this image, but we think we got the idea.”
The Black Cat, Barney’s Beanery and their old slur sign, and the first gay pride parade are also depicted. Lesbians on motorcycles ride down Hollywood Boulevard in a scene that’s become a staple of the parade in the years since.
As for what Baca wants Angelenos to take away from this walk down history lane, she says:
“It’s a massive education project. It’s meant to tell people the stories of the struggles for civil rights and what people went through to make that happen.”
